Quori: A Community-Informed Design of a Socially Interactive Humanoid Robot

TL;DR

This paper introduces Quori, an affordable, community-designed humanoid robot platform aimed at advancing socially interactive human-robot interaction research, with initial testing and deployment supporting diverse research needs.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel, cost-effective humanoid robot design developed with community input, enabling widespread HRI research and data collection.

Findings

Successful initial testing of Quori platform

Six-month deployment with diverse research groups

Community-involved design process

Abstract

Hardware platforms for socially interactive robotics can be limited by cost or lack of functionality. This paper presents the overall system -- design, hardware, and software -- for Quori, a novel, affordable, socially interactive humanoid robot platform for facilitating non-contact human-robot interaction (HRI) research. The design of the system is motivated by feedback sampled from the HRI research community. The overall design maintains a balance of affordability and functionality. Initial Quori testing and a six-month deployment are presented. Ten Quori platforms have been awarded to a diverse group of researchers from across the United States to facilitate HRI research to build a community database from a common platform.